Honest Gamers: "In The 7th Guest, you take on the role of an unnamed stranger who has arrived at the Stauf mansion, a mansion long reputed to be haunted by the spirit of old man Stauf, a toy maker who supposedly trapped the souls of children in his toys. The mansion is also haunted by six guests that he invited one night long ago to join him in a scavenger hunt through the mansion, promising money and power to the winner. As you go through the mansion, you recreate the steps of the hunt, and learn the fates of the guests as they succumb to Stauf's wiles.
At least, I think that's the plot. Sometimes it's hard to tell, to be honest. For one thing, the story is told non-linearly, as you choose which rooms to explore and, to a certain degree, in what order. For another, some of the events you witness are visions of what happened in the past, while others are illusions that the guests saw in the past, and others are happening to the ghosts now. Still others are happening now to the illusions that were created years ago. Confused?
The game tries to push this confusion aside and flesh itself out with scenes of murder, occultism, and even a few sexual romps, but don't be expecting much more than awkward kisses and projectile vomit added in via MS-Paint."
Games Asylum: "[...] the adventure classic is about to grace Nintendo hardware for the first time ever – a conversion is showing for release on the Switch eShop next week (6th April,) published by Liron Barzilai.
Rob Pitt writes: The 7th Guest is a cult classic puzzle game amongst older gamers like myself. It was one of the first CD-Rom games I owned for my PC back in 1993 and absolutely scared me to the point in which I couldn’t play it with the lights off and never had the courage to complete it at the time.
Looking back on this, after playing through it from beginning to end a few days ago, it seems very silly as it’s more cheesy than scary. However, the early ’90s was a different time, this sort of interactive FMV media was new and there was no internet to dilute young children from this sort of creepy experience.
To mark the 25th anniversary, Trilobyte Games teamed up with MojoTouch to touch up and re-release The 7th Guest on both Steam and GoG.
True - it was a lot less scary replaying it this weekend though. But, I wanted to get through it before I jumped into The 13th Doll, the fan-made sequel which was official endorsed by Trilobyte to use likenesses of the mansion and characters - it even has the original Henry Stauf actor in it!
We have a review of that coming soon as well.
A fan-made sequel for The 7th Guest (The 13th Doll) which has been in development for over 15 years has a confirmed release date this October.
